She laughed, and shook her head very expressively.  I knew the strength of my last argument, and repeated it:  “Suppose you were in Miss Margaret’s place?”

“Hush! don’t speak so loud,” resumed the girl in a confidential whisper.  “I’m sure you’re a gentleman.  I should like to help you—­if I could only dare to do it, I should indeed!”

“That’s a good girl,” I said.  “Now tell me, when does Miss Margaret go out to-day; and who goes with her?”

“Dear! dear!—­it’s very wrong to say it; but I must.  She’ll go out with me to market, this morning, at eleven o’clock.  She’s done it for the last week.  Master don’t like it; but Missus begged and prayed she might; for Missus says she won’t be fit to be married, if she knows nothing about housekeeping, and prices, and what’s good meat, and what isn’t, and all that, you know.”

“Thank you a thousand times! you have given me all the help I want.  I’ll be here before eleven, waiting for you to come out.”

“Oh, please don’t, Sir—­I wish I hadn’t told you—­I oughtn’t, indeed I oughtn’t!”

“No fear—­you shall not lose by what you have told me—­I promise all I said I would promise—­good bye.  And mind, not a word to Miss Margaret till I see her!”

As I hurried away, I heard the girl run a few paces after me—­then stop—­then return, and close the garden gate, softly.  She had evidently put herself once more in Miss Margaret’s place; and had given up all idea of further resistance as she did so.

How should I occupy the hours until eleven o’clock?  Deceit whispered:—­Go home; avoid even the chance of exciting suspicion, by breakfasting with your family as usual.  And as deceit counselled, so I acted.

I never remember Clara more kind, more ready with all those trifling little cares and attentions which have so exquisite a grace, when offered by a woman to a man, and especially by a sister to a brother, as when she and I and my father assembled together at the breakfast-table.  I now recollect with shame how little I thought about her, or spoke to her on that morning; with how little hesitation or self-reproach I excused myself from accepting an engagement which she wished to make with me for that day.  My father was absorbed in some matter of business; to him she could not speak.  It was to me that she addressed all her wonted questions and remarks of the morning.  I hardly listened to them; I answered them carelessly and briefly.  The moment breakfast was over, without a word of explanation I hastily left the house again.

As I descended the steps, I glanced by accident at the dining-room window.  Clara was looking after me from it.  There was the same anxious expression on her face which it had worn when she left me the evening before.  She smiled as our eyes met—­a sad, faint smile that made her look unlike herself.  But it produced no impression on me then:  I had no attention for anything but my approaching interview with Margaret.  My life throbbed and burned within me, in that direction:  it was all coldness, torpor, insensibility, in every other.